Naturalism and Causal Explanation

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Abstract

Semantic properties are not commonly held to be part of the basic
ontological furniture of the world. Consequently, we confront a
problem: how to 'naturalize' semantics so as to reveal these
properties in their true ontological colors? Dominant naturalistic
theories address semantic properties as properties of some other
(more primitive, less problematic) kind. The reductionistic flavor is
unmistakable. The following quote from Fodor's Psychosemantics is
probably the contemporary locus classicus of this trend. Fodor is
commendably unapologetic:
"I suppose that sooner or later the physicists will complete the
catalogue they've been compiling of the ultimate and
irreducible properties of things. When they do, the likes of
spin, charm, and charge will perhaps appear upon their list. But
aboutness surely won't; intentionality simply doesn't go that
deep. It's hard to see, in the face of this consideration, how
one can be a Realist about intentionality without also being,
to some extent or other, a Reductionist. If the semantic and
the intentional are real properties of things, it must be in
virtue of their identity with (or maybe of their supervenience
on?) properties that are themselves neither intentional nor
semantic. If aboutness is real, it must be really something
else."
(Fodor 1987, 97)
Notice the shape of this explanatory project. Intentional
properties will count as real in virtue of their identity with, or
supervenience on, some set of lower-level physical properties. Fodor
thus assumes, in effect (as do many others engaged in
naturalization projects for semantics), that the program of
naturalization demands a higher-to-lower, top-to-bottom, kind of
explanatory strategy.
This paper addresses precisely that assumption, namely, that
the non-semantic properties on which semantic properties depend,
belong to what are intuitively lower levels of description than the
intentional level itself. It also questions the higher-to-lower
explanatory scheme associated with that assumption. My
discussion of this topic draws on Robert Brandom's recent work
(Brandom 1994) and can be considered an analysis of Brandom's
stance and its implications. The discussion should help to explain
the general lack of progress in the project of naturalizing content. It
should also help show why attempts to eliminate the normative
vocabulary employed in specifying the practices that guide the use of
a language are unlikely to succeed.
I shall start by displaying the general order of explanation
that characterizes typical naturalization projects, showing that even
when a full reduction to physics is avoided, some important
assumptions inherited from the explanatory model of physics
remain. These include the demand for an array of causal
explanations couched in terms of ultimate properties of the world,
and the idea that such non-semantic properties should be
constitutive (in a narrow or individualistic sense to be explained
below) of whatever semantic properties are in question. Extending
Brandom's idea that the normativity of content is not reducible to
physics, I shall argue that even such residual demands are
inappropriate. More positively, I suggest that, despite the deep
irreducibility of the normative dimension of content, we need not
consider that dimension either primitive or inexplicable. Instead,
such normative aspects can be unpacked by invoking a different,
lower-to-higher, explanatory scheme in which the explanans includes
higher level features such as skilled know-how and social frames of
action.